Tangled Threads by Pearl Ross at Inkitt

Story Notes

Zara Cole was twenty-six years old, working her first major investigation, and three phone calls away from being saved.

Nobody answered.

Tangled Threads begins where most crime novels would end — with a body already found and a best friend already broken — and then it refuses to stop.

This is not a story about a detective following a case file. It is a story about Becca Owens, a graphic designer with no training, no authority, and no option but to find the truth about what happened to the woman who had been her closest friend since the seventh grade, because the person the police are looking at sideways is her, and the person who actually did it is the most trusted man in Clairmont.

He gives scholarships. He visits the elderly. He attended the vigil with a candle in his hand and his arm around the mother of the woman he killed.

And then he came to see Becca.

Built around a real DNA investigation, a joint operation between a small-town detective and a federal drug task force, and a courtroom procedure that delivers every answer the story builds toward.

This is a story about what it costs to pursue justice when the system is satisfied and you are not. It is about grief that has a task attached to it. It is about the three missed calls that a woman carries for the rest of her life and what she does with them.

Summary

She was twenty minutes away. Her phone was on silent. Her best friend called three times. When Becca Owens comes home from a party to find 26-year-old investigative journalist Zara Cole dead in her own bedroom, the world as she knows it collapses in four seconds. Zara had been getting close to something; a name, a network, a truth that someone in Clairmont, Tennessee had decided was worth killing to protect. And the only person who knew exactly how close Zara had gotten was Becca herself. Because Zara called her three times in her final hour. Becca never picked up. Now the phone sits in an evidence bag, the timestamps burning like an accusation, and Becca has made the only vow she has left: she will find out who walked through that unlocked door. What she discovers is worse than she imagined. The man who killed her best friend is not a stranger in the dark. He is Clairmont's most beloved figure. And then he came looking for Becca. With childhood friend and paralegal Noah Cartwright working the investigation beside her, and Detective Lena Graves forming an unlikely alliance with both of them, Becca must gather enough evidence to bring down a man that Clairmont would never believe capable of murder before he decides that she knows too much to leave alive. Tangled Threads is a gripping, emotionally devastating small-town crime mystery about grief, guilt, loyalty, and the specific, brutal courage it takes to pursue justice for someone you loved. It moves at the speed of a thriller, hits with the weight of real human loss, and does not let go until the final page. The DNA was under Zara's fingernails. She fought back. She left him all over her. All Becca had to do was follow where her best friend pointed. For readers who love crime fiction with a female protagonist, small-town murder investigations with real procedural depth, and stories that are as emotionally honest as they are relentlessly gripping; Tangled Threads is the book you will finish in one sitting and immediately recommend to everyone you know. Scroll up and start reading today; justice is waiting, and so is the truth.

Genre: Mystery

Author: Pearl Ross

Status: Complete

Chapters: 25

Rating: n/a

Age Rating: 16+

Untitled chapter 1

TANGLED THREADS

When the Truth Unravels, Justice Follows

(Curious Cases Novella)

Pearl Ross

TANGLED THREADS

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other non-commercial uses permitted by copyright law.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Interior design by Candle Row Press

For every woman who ever picked up a pen and pointed it at the truth.

And for the friends who come running when we need them.

The Curious Cases Series

Book One: Butter, Sugar & Betrayal — A Maple Creek Bakery Mystery

Book Two: A Deadly Dish in Dovecote — A Small-Town Chef’s Cozy Investigation

Book Three: The Widow of Larkspur Cottage — A 1920s Historical Cozy Mystery

Book Four: The Poisoned Pie Society — A Cozy Culinary Whodunit

Book Five: A Scandal in Saltwick Bay — A Cozy British Village Mystery

Book Six: Spells, Scones & Suspects — A Witch’s Cozy Mystery

Book Seven: Every Clue Has a Tail — A Cozy Pet Mystery Novella

Book Eight: Pawprints at the Crime Scene — A Cozy Animal Rescue Mystery.